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Puerto Rico now puts Hurricane Maria death toll at 1,427: AP

The commonwealth of Puerto Rico, in a new congressional assessment, concedes that its prior estimate of Hurricane Maria's death toll undershot by a factor of more than 20. It now attributes 1,427 deaths to the September 2017 natural disaster, according to an Associated Press report, having compared deaths recorded in the aftermath of the storm (Hurricane Irma struck the U.S. territory two weeks after Maria) to the average for those same months in a typical year. The prior government estimate of attributable deaths was just 64. During a visit to the island last October, President Trump favorably compared the death count -- then estimated at just 16, according to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló -- to that of a "real catastrophe" such as Hurricane Katrina, which is believed to have killed more than 1,800 in U.S. Gulf Coast states in 2005. A Harvard study earlier this year concluded Hurricane Maria's death count in Puerto Rico would ultimately exceed 4,700.

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